


To Esca (If You're Still Out There)

by twoheadedenby



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 23:05:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6445882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoheadedenby/pseuds/twoheadedenby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short letter, from one erstwhile best friend to another. The ink is faded, and the paper seems like it's been crumpled from being held too much over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Esca (If You're Still Out There)

Dear Esca,

I don’t know if you’ll ever read this. I don’t know if you made it to Ul’Dah before the Calamity hit. I don’t know where you ended up after that, if you even made it at all. I tell myself that you must have - you’re a fighter, you always were, and I won’t let myself believe that you would let anything take that away from you.

It’s been almost a year. Since then, winter here has never ended. It’s been hard for people who can’t stand the cold, or the short days, so maybe you’re lucky you left when you did. It’s been hard for me too. Everything feels... different, now. When I walk through the snow now it’s not just my own footsteps I can hear; it’s the absence of yours. I don’t just see the landscape any more, I see the places our footprints used to be; the snowmen we built that are long since melted. The memories we made are buried under months of fresh snow now. At night the crackle of the fires and the roar of the wind are louder than ever when I wake up in the dead of night and can’t focus on the sound of your breathing to shut them out.

I’d forgotten what it feels like to be afraid. Now, whenever things get quiet the silence is soon filled with the screams and cries and frantic, whispered prayers - then that deafening roar, over and over again. Life moves slowly here (slower than ever without the turn of seasons), and I have too much time to think now. Too much time to dwell on feelings I don’t understand, that I didn’t feel before I met you, or before you left. For the first time, I think I want to _live_ , and for the first time I’m so afraid to die that sometimes I can’t move.

I’m writing this now because I’ve decided something has to change. I’ve spent too long in one place, and I’m starting to suffocate. Maybe I’m just running away all over again, but this time it feels like the start of something, not just a desperate gambit to delay the inevitable. I thought about leaving this letter with someone at the Observatorium before I left, but I think if you’re ever going to see it at all it’s going to be because I gave it to you in person. The point is, though, that I’m done with disappearing acts. It haunts me thinking that maybe _they_ don’t know why I left, and it haunts me worse knowing how many things went left unsaid between us because I was afraid to say goodbye. All I had in me when you left was anger and blame (towards both of us), and it meant I never got to say the things I should have: thank you, and good luck.

I’m not going to Ul’Dah. I’m not ready yet (and I don’t know if I ever will be), and besides, I don’t think I’ll be able to find you if you don’t want to be found. I think if we ever meet again it’s going to be down to luck, and all I can do is hope. Until then, I think I have to learn to be someone who knows how to appreciate everything you did for me, because I know I wasn’t before, when it actually mattered.

Until then,

\- G


End file.
